on October 7th the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a brutal surprise attack on the nation of Israel more than a month later Israel and Hamas are engaged in a bloody struggle in Gaza does this conflict have prophetic implications Dr David K Bernard's response is coming up next welcome to Apostolic life in the 2st century a podcast dedicated to helping modern-day Believers live out the teachings of the first century church this podcast is part of the Teaching Ministry of Dr David K Bernard Dr Bernard has dedicated his life to studying the Bible and helping Believers apply
its message to their daily lives in Apostolic life in the 21st century Dr Bernard answers your questions about what the Bible teaches and how those teachings apply to everyday life if you enjoy this podcast we encourage you to check out Dr David K Bernard's books Dr Bernard has written more than 30 books on biblical Theology and Christian Living and Leadership visit Pentecostal publishing.com and search David Bernard for a list of available titles enter promo code dk10 at checkout to save 10% on your order that's Pentecostal publishing.com promo code dk10 to save 10% at checkout thank
you for joining us our audience members are undoubtedly well aware that in early October the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel very brutal attack over, 1400 Israelis were killed and of course Israel retaliated and as of the recording of This podcast they had actually launched I believe a limited ground invasion of Gaza so the question people are asking is how does this specific event fit into Bible prophecy I think that's a question that comes up anytime Israel is involved in any sort of armed conflict but do you see this is in any
ways the Fulfillment of scripture and if so how uh I would say this specific event is not necessarily fulfillment of scripture however uh what's happening now in the Middle East does show us how the end time could easily wrap up so let me give you a little bit of historical background before I go back to the Bible First of all uh Israel um or the maybe the area of Palestine the early 20th century was under the oversight of the United Kingdom the British government uh Palestinians lived there who are Arabs and also some Jews lived
there the British government had a policy of allowing Jews from Europe to go back to Palestine their ancestral Homeland and then of course World War II created the Holocaust in which six million Jews were killed and great numbers of uh great populations throughout Europe were decimated and so the United Nations uh said that it would establish Israel as a nation that took place in 1948 so at that time you had Jewish communities you had Palestinian Comm communities living in very close um proximity and so they kind of carved out an area that would be for
the state of Israel well the day that Israel announced its independence and the United Nations including the US uh recognize Israel as a nation seven Arab Nations attacked to destroy it to eliminate Israel to kill the Jews to throw them into the sea and reestablish Arab control over the entire region of Palestine even though many Jews had lived there for centuries and had come back for decades and sadly many of the palestini Arabs that there was a Announcement by these Arab Nations that were attacking flee your area leave uh um evacuate so that we can
destroy the whole IA um and so many Palestines fled thinking that in a few days they would come back and they would establish sovereignty over the land well against the odds the infant Jewish Nation uh fended off the attacks defeated the invading armies and then they uh not only secured their own territory but additional territory because actually the main area is only probably like a 100 miles long and in some places 30 40 50 miles wide so you're not talking about a huge amount of territory and to defend these little enclaves and defend the borders
is is very difficult so uh when Israel uh expelled these invading armies and secured its borders well it adjusted some of those borders to to protect its own people and so some additional Palestinians were forced out to other areas so they went into and they already did live into the strip known as Gaza also uh area known as the West Bank and many went across the Jordan River into what is now the country of Jordan uh but the these various Arab Nations including Egypt and Jordan did not want the Palestine Arabs to permanently live there
they wanted to push them back to where they had evacuated so many of them had fled of their own accord or at the instigation of the neighboring Arab Nations who invaded uh so that created the situation exists now in 1967 there was the 6 Day War which many of these same Arab Nations attempted to attack Israel again Israel was able to win a lightning victory in six days and they conquered um the Arab part of Jerusalem they conquered the West Bank and they secured their borders that conquered the Golan Heights which is The High Ground
overlooking the nation of Israel because without that High Ground which was occupied by Syria it would be difficult to defend against um artillery coming right down into Israel so anyway that set the borders that exist today uh but still the Palestinian Arabs now there are many Arabs that live in Israel that are Israeli citizens uh in fact there is an Arab predominantly Arab party in the the parliament the knesset um but Israel still controls uh the West Bank and Gaza where millions of couple millions of Arabs live and Israel has overseen that but allowed them
to set up their own government the idea was they would have a democracy and of course all these years the International Community including Israel has been working on a two-state solution so could you have the state of Israel with its borders but could you also have a Palestinian state that would be completely sovereign it would be a democracy that would control its territory and over the years um the US the UN and even Israel um has proposed some sort of solution but today the Palestinian Arabs have rejected any kind of two-state solution their official position
is eliminate the state of Israel and in fact the protests in recent um weeks have said from The River To The Sea Palestine shall be free what that means is they want to completely wipe out JW presumably either kill them all or expel them and send them somewhere else and they want the entire area to be exclusively for Palestinian Arabs now so that's the background that we're facing and then there was the uh the yam Kapur War 1973 the holiest day of the year the day of atonement again some of these Arab Nations attacked Israel
this time Israel was caught by surprised and came within a hair's breath of losing in fact uh from the north there's an area called the valley of tear which the Israeli tanks fought off the syrians I think they came down to if I remember correctly only 13 tanks left before they stopped the advance and of course the Arabs didn't know how many they had left but they came that close to breaching the line which they could have then invaded Jerusalem and uh re havav if not destroyed the the whole nation so it's from that perspective
that we see what's going on so I would make a few comments first of all I believe Israel has a right to exist number one I believe biblically uh God has given that um that area to Israel doesn't mean the Palestine shouldn't have a nation or Arabs shouldn't live in Israel or in the West Bank or whatever I'm not making comment on that I just say Israel has a right to exist as a nation and that's international law as well therefore I think Israel has right to defend itself that doesn't mean we have to say
that everything the Israeli government does is right that doesn't uh that doesn't mean we don't care about the lives of Palestinians and that doesn't mean we shouldn't um ask for as many safeguards as possible to protect civilians the sad thing is Gaza is controlled by Hamas which is a terrorist organization there's no democracy there's no voting on them and they use civilians as Shields they build their command centers and and and their rocket launchers right where civilians are so when you try to eliminate those they're unavoidable civilian casualties so so should Israel take every effort
to try to minimize those casualties obviously so we can uh we can debate or question the policies the procedures um in fact from a church perspective we have our own United Pentecostal members who are Israelis who are Palestinians uh in the West Bank and in Gaza so and we have across the world in Arab Nations and Muslim nations we have many churches so we're not promoting Jews versus Arabs or Arabs versus Jews or or Muslim communities versus Jewish communities or or Israel versus Gaza or versus Palestine we we support all those people from all those
backgrounds we want to see them all protected we want to have the gospel freely preached and churches established and operate freely in all those areas so our interest is not just one one nation our interest is peace in the whole Middle East so that's our background that's our position um so in that sense we're pro Palestinian and pro-israeli the people we want to see them safe and secure and actually to this point Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East so we think that's valuable to protect and preserve and I didn't do a count
but there are probably 30 Arab Nations there's only one Jewish Nation so the idea that we would eliminate one Jewish Nation uh in favor of um one more Arab Nation I don't think that's tenable I as again I think there could be some sort of two-state solution as it's called where the state of Israel exists and the state of Palestine exists in peace and Harmony and uh respecting and helping one another that would be the goal now having said that if you read the book of Ezekiel The Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation
what you'll find in the end time that Israel will exist as a nation that armies from the north there will be an International Coalition of armies from the north uh and they will come down and they will invade Israel and there will be a figure that we often call the Antichrist uh the man of sin the Beast of Revelation that will be the leader and he will seemingly be Israel's friend and promote peace but then he will turn against Israel he will demand to be worshiped he will have a world government uh it may not
be successful in conquering the whole world but he will have a world government system that he's trying to implement he'll have a world economic system that he's trying to get everybody to submit to and he'll have a world religious system with a false prophet and so he's using these mechanisms to control the whole world but Israel will stand against him and so uh will not accept this and so he will come to invade them and there will be this Great Valley in the A great battle in the valley of Armageddon and he will seemingly be
at the point of conquering Israel when Jesus Christ will return to Earth and defend uh Israel and at that time Israel as a whole will recognize Jesus Christ as their Messiah and that will user in the millennial Kingdom that's what we read uh when we put together the prophecies also the book of Zechariah would have some relevance here so that's the big scheme that we see uh the end time events wrapping up so when will that happen we don't know but over Generations we believe this is going to happen someday but in past Generations we
couldn't really see how that would happen so before 1948 there was no nation of Israel from from the time of the 2 century when Rome destroyed the nation and Scattered the Jews across the world and throughout Europe until 1948 there was no actual nation of Israel where all this could happen and as far as a world government a world economic system we couldn't really see how that would happen now with computer technology the internet chips and um you know digital currency you could actually see how such a system could easily be implemented in a relatively
short time and with video technology the the whole world being able to see images you can see how the Prophecies of Revelation could be fulfilled in detail whereas past Generations could Proclaim it but we couldn't explain technologically or politically or economically how that could actually be implemented now we could see these prophecies could be implemented almost overnight and so I don't see that this particular conflict between Israel and Hamas is a direct fulfillment of a particular prophecy of scripture but I do see the concept of the nations of the world and and you look at
the ancient Nations that are listed in the Bible the modern counterparts would be you know Persia or Iran turkey Russia China so these are actually the very Nations and they're they are speaking against Israel and what's shocking from our perspective in North America is that so many people are supporting terrorism supporting Hamas even on our own college campuses but so before we would think well the US and Europe would stand solidly against any form of terrorism and would stand solidly for Israel's right to exist but perhaps for the first time since the Nazis you have
significant portions of people in the west and in many cases they're immigrants from Arab and Muslim nations or descendants of immigrants but for the first time since World War II you have significant voices in the West in the US saying Israel should be eliminated from the earth and terrorism against Israel is Justified and should be celebrated well that's shocking but that's something that didn't that we couldn't have imagined 20 years ago in America for example so that lets you know you know in the past we would say well if if a world coalitions tried to
come against Israel well the US and Europe would counteract that well now we're seeing maybe not so and even if we did uh we may not be very strong we may not have many allies so actually we're now in a position of seeing these military prophecies could be fulfilled in a short period of time we could wake up with the news that a coalition of armies from all the world are now coming against the tiny nation of Israel and you know from a a a geographical perspective Israel is a very small nation it's an important
Nation but it it's not a world power so just in the abstract why would there be a world conflict over this small piece of territory it doesn't make sense economically or politically but it makes sense in terms of Bible prophecy so that's the big takeaway is that I see this climic showing us that the Bible's prophecies could come to pass in our day and we now see maybe for the first time how how and why this could happen almost overnight so that is a sobering thought I I will say this we should not live in
fear and dread of the end time if we're filled with the Holy Spirit if we're called by the name of Jesus then the Bible says um look up for your Redemption draw nigh so whatever happens in the world we're not looking for the Antichrist we're looking for Jesus Christ and whatever our particular interpretation of Prophecy uh we can have faith in God that God has a plan for his people in the end time thank you for listening to this episode of apostolic life in the 21st century if you enjoy this podcast please take a moment
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